Mining the Soul: From the Inside Out (Jung on the Hudson Book Series.) [Paperback]

Robin Robertson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Jung on the Hudson Book Series. | Publication Date: December 2000

Do you think that life happens to you from the outside in? Think again! Robin Robertson says that we are born as complex repositories of memories and behaviors. Some things we learn by rote from our environment, but other parts of ourselves the important things we know in our inner soul before we "know" them in our conscious mind are awaiting for various "triggers" to release them from the silence. Introduction. Bibliography. Index.

Product Details

• Paperback: 209 pages
• Publisher: Nicolas Hays (December 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892540559
• ISBN-13: 978-0892540556
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #792,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #93 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Bible & Other Sacred Texts > I Ching

More About the Author

Robin Robertson has spent a life-time bridging the worlds of psychology, science, business and the arts. He's a clinical psychologist, university professor and writer who has published sixteen books and more than a hundred articles in either psychology or his hobby field of magic. He teaches psychology on-line to graduate level students as an Associate Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Before becoming a psychologist, he was a vice-president of software development for a large insurance company, and for the last twenty years, he's been a consultant to a multi-employer pension plan. He has separate undergraduate degrees in mathematics and English literature, as well as an M.A. in counseling psychology, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

Robin's books, often on Jungian psychology or the relationship between psychology and science, have gone through multiple printings, new editions, and foreign translations. Since 1986, he's been a writer, editor, columnist and editorial board member of the Jungian journal Psychological Perspectives (a beautiful journal that speaks not merely to specialists, but to everyone who loves Jung.)

He has also been heavily involved with the applications of chaos theory in psychology as a writer, editor, speaker, and officer of the "Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences." And, in more recent years, he's been a consulting editor and contributor for the cybernetics journal Cybernetics & Human Knowing (a journal that looks at deep issues about the nature of reality).

He is a life-time amateur magician, and a member of the Order of Merlin of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, who has published six magic books and many original effects, in recent years often collaborating with the clever Scottish magician, Peter Duffie.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A United Field Theory, November 16, 2000

By 

R E Messer (Bowling Green, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mining the Soul: From the Inside Out (Jung on the Hudson Book Series.) (Paperback)

Mining the soul: from the inside out. 2000 , by Robin Robertson. York Beach: Nicholas-Hayes. Reviewed by Richard Messer, Ph.D.

Robin Robertson tells us at the onset that, "When we dig deep enough into our own identity, we see the whole world spread before us."(4) The mining metaphor seems apt in that the inner journey may be readily seen as an encounter with and processing of the paradoxical interrelatedness of all our experience, an operation that leads to the knowledge of the unity of all life. This book has a practical, pro-active edge to it and, having presented his thesis that we live our lives from the inside out, Robertson shows that the inner world can best be entered by means of gateways and rituals, then proceeds to guide us through the realms of dreams, synchronicity, meditation, the Tibetan Bardos, chakra lore, and divination, with particular attention given to mind machines, channeling, music tapes and CDs, active imagination and the I Ching. Dreams are the most obvious and accessible gateway to one's inner life and early on Robertson's discussion of dreams makes clear what he means by "gateways". The section on dreams gives way to a wide ranging discussion of the most recent investigations in brain research and holograms, a segue intended to help the reader integrate the personal and the subjective, the inner world, with the so-called objective and scientific world. Robertson provides . . ." scientific descriptions of unusual phenomenon simply because we are all so inculcated with the view that science knows everything, (or so we think), that it's hard for us to take anything truly seriously unless it has scientific support. (4) Throughout, the author's strategy is to link the two worlds, or cultures, that of the inner and mystical, or spiritual, with that of the outer and common sensical, or scientific, so that they are mutually illuminating. Dr. Robertson's lucid prose renders vividly clear not only the opaque constructions of science and mathematics, such as those having to do with the holographic universe, chaos theory, neural networks, saliency and the ins and outs of the latest mind tools, but also the seemingly mysterious propositions of mediumistic oracles, Jungian active imagination, and chakra meditation, as well as those of the psychoid universe and the I Ching. One of the great delights of this book is the depth and sweep of Robin Robertson's knowledge. Obviously, much of this material on mediation, or mind machines or the I Ching and so on is in wide circulation in the popular market and we often find that it really is more or less discredited by the intellectual community as "fringe" or New Age wishful and wistful speculation and enthusiasm. We might think of it as the shadow side of mainstream science. A good part of the power of this book is that the author's vision invites this shadow side in and makes a meaningful place for it. One is reminded of the various attempts in the twentieth century to find a unified field theory. Robinson does not tell us that this is his goal; his hope for his book is more practical: "This book might be viewed as a guidebook toward creating trained practitioners of the psyche." (27), and he accomplishes this end admirably. Mining the Soul, not only argues for the unity of inner and outer worlds, it demonstrates it. To agree to this unity, to consider and act upon the principles of the Spirit incarnate is, indeed, to take up a revolutionary stance. Would it not be revolutionary, for instance, in terms of the world wide environmental, ecological crisis, if we were to experience the full interrelatedness of inner and outer, so that we fully realized that our bodies, flesh, spirit and soul, and our planet are in essence one?

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